Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness

by Rick Hanson

Everyone is fragile. As Leonard Cohen sang: “There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.” Everyone is cracked. Everyone needs compassion.

Try to see the big picture. Whatever has happened is probably a short chapter in the long book of your life.

Even the most fulfilling situations, occupations, and relationships may change. Sooner or later, one way or another, the bottom could fall out. But whatever you have inside yourself is with you always.

This is not positive thinking. It’s realistic thinking: seeing the whole mosaic of the world around you and the complexity of your experience, despite the brain’s tendencies to fixate on a handful of bad tiles in that mosaic while overlooking the jewel-like good ones.

Even if your efforts don’t pay off, you’ll know in your heart that you tried, and that in itself feels honorable and comforting.

Knowing in your heart that you are a basically good person is a true refuge. No matter the ups and downs of successes and failures, loves and losses, you can find comfort and strength in this knowledge. Independent of all achievements, fame, and fortune, there is always goodness in the core of your being.

A few times a day, look at a stranger or distant acquaintance and get a feeling for the burdens that person is carrying.